


once/twice

by earlylight



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Differentiating between Tyrelliot and Tyrobot is subjective at this point: choose your own adventure, F/M, M/M, POV Second Person, Spoilers through to Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-23 02:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11980206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlylight/pseuds/earlylight
Summary: If Elliot knew that Mr. Robot had let you in – whether inadvertently, or by design – he might consider it important. Or perhaps the moment itself wouldn’t be important, just another bright drop into the well of missing time he’s trying desperately to fill. Perhaps it would anger him, a further violation of his trust in you, another test of madness or reality, and he would spill that moment to the floor, bleeding it out through the cracks in his mind. You wouldn’t know. You’re just an observer.Elliot wakes up after the events of the Season 2 finale.





	once/twice

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this last year after I finished S2, and only remembered this existed when I saw the S3 trailer the other day. Oops. Enjoy this experimental piece of fiction that will be entirely jossed in a little over a month's time.
> 
> If it's unclear, this is written from the perspective of Elliot's invisible friend, a.k.a. We The Audience.

There is no awareness of the time between two conscious thoughts. Each instance slides against the next, buttery smooth, with only the whisper of their passage to indicate they are two halves with an abyss between. One moment you were there, and the next moment you are here – two pins dropped on a map, with no added directions. Elliot wakes up in his bed, in a car, by a phone, and then on a gurney.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Pulse around ninety as determined by a finger clip, seemingly steady. There’s an IV tube snaking down Elliot’s arm, brushing the plastic tag wrapping his wrist before looping up into a drip bag. The intensity of the light from a surgical lamp positioned over the bed throws even the pale blue of his hospital gown into stark relief.

_Was it real?_

Even if you could reply, your answer would not be the one he is looking for. You are a silent observer of the reality he chooses to share – therefore, you are as unreliable a narrator as he is. But, spoken aloud, Angela can hear him too.

“Yes,” she says, lips pressed in the faintest impression of a smile. She’s tucked against the side of the bed in a high-backed wooden chair, the corporate ghost of the Angela both you and Elliot have known. “I’m here, Elliot. I’m so happy you’re okay.”

_Could be another one of his mind games. Is he here? Can you see him?_

“What…” Elliot pauses to cough. “What happened?”

His voice is hoarse, wrecked. Angela silently offers him a glass of water that he gulps down messily. You’re generally in the dark as to how Elliot is feeling at any one time, which is somewhat ironic, given that you are a creation of his very psyche. It’s almost as though there’s a pane of glass separating you both, muffling anything but sight and sound. Right now, for example, you could make an educated guess that he’s in some degree of pain. There’s probably the quintessential ‘hospital smell’ of disinfectant in the air. Maybe the gown he’s wearing is kind of scratchy. Either way – you can only watch, and listen.

“You were shot, but it managed to miss anything vital,” Angela tells him, as he hands her back the empty glass. “You were in a bad way when you were brought in, but you pulled through in the end. We’re all very lucky.”

_So it was real – Tyrell’s not dead, he shot me for trying to stop the hack. Mr. Robot set it up, he lied, all this time he made me think I had killed him, that he wasn’t real, that he would shoot me like he had again and again in jail. All along annihilation was never mine to choose, it was his choice, and he made it. Stage 2 over us._

_You couldn’t have known, could you? You were here with me, all along. Right?_

“Elliot…” she says, lightly placing a hand on his shoulder. Elliot flinches, and she quickly retracts it. “They said there might be some residual effects – how are you feeling?”

_Shit. What am I on right now? Angela didn’t know about the morphine. Am I on anything? It feels like there’s nothing numbing the pain. My tolerance is probably too high now for the standard hospital dosage to give any effect anyway. Maybe I need to feel this to know it was real._

“Elliot?”

“I’m fine. How long have I been asleep? Is this... the first time I’ve been awake?”

“Yes, you’ve been under for three days,” Angela replies, her tone light. “Yesterday was the coldest August day in nearly a decade. Windy, freezing rain… like that one year when we were kids, do you remember? We begged to go into town to see the fireworks for the fourth of July, but they ended up canceling due to the weather – exactly like that.”

_I don’t remember that ever happening. I don’t know how far I can trust my memories, but I think she’s talking in code. Fourth of July fireworks, that could be Stage 2, which means the hack was never completed. Mr. Robot’s plan failed. But how did Angela find out? How much does she know? She should never have gotten involved in this. She said on the train she was going to confess to the FBI, but somehow she’s here. Unless both of us are in custody. It doesn’t matter – if she’s talking in code, she’s still trying to protect me, and someone needs to protect her from me._

_Mr. Robot can never be allowed to regain control. He can’t be controlled, he’s a cancer that’s metastasizing through my mind, eventually he is going to consume me and destroy everything in my life. I have to go back to jail. If I confess to everything, that I did all of this, I could get life. Locked up, away from a terminal, it’s the only way I can stop him now._

“I need to talk to the FBI. Right now. I need to end this, before he can hurt—”

She cuts him off with a kiss, her pale hair spooling out across Elliot’s chest. Her lips then brush his cheek. “We can’t talk here,” she whispers against his skin. “Later. I’ll come for you. Trust me.”

“Tyrell?” Elliot asks softly.

“Later,” Angela reaffirms. She then leans back up, raising her voice back to speaking volume. “You’ve been through a lot, Elliot,” she says, gentle, her hand still pressed to Elliot’s breastbone. “It’s natural for you to be... disorientated. Right now you need to rest. I’ll get you some more water.” She picks up the glass and stands, brushing off her skirt, her change in position revealing an area of the room previously blocked from view.

There’s a security camera high in the corner, red light blinking like a slow drip.

“Angela, wait.” She pauses, turning to look back at him. “Are you… is everything okay?”

“Of course,” she says, the faint smile returning. “Get some sleep.”

This is not the standard hospital room you may have assumed it was when Elliot woke up. You notice it now only because Elliot notices it, which is how it goes sometimes. The room is dimly lit outside the circle of light provided by the surgical lamp, and bereft of furnishings aside from the medical paraphernalia surrounding Elliot’s gurney. No windows, one door, where a man in full cleansuit attire sits on a bucket, eating a sandwich. Angela murmurs something to him, and he unbolts the door to let her out.

You’ve probably come to this conclusion earlier, but in all fairness, Elliot’s not exactly in peak form. Still, he can put two and two together.

_The Dark Army have us._

*

 _Mind awake, body asleep_.

Earlier you inferred that you’re shackled by Elliot’s reality, which is true, but not the complete truth. Elliot is your creator, and has complete power over your existence: true. But you also have long stretches of omniscience, where you reach beyond the sphere of his perception. You’ve seen other people in moments Elliot could never have seen, in places he has never visited, and in languages he cannot understand. If you were the kind of entity that speculated about how this could even be possible, perhaps you’d chalk it up to the immense power of Elliot’s mind, so great in magnitude that he is slowly being crushed by its weight. But you’ve never particularly thought to question it – somehow, it seems natural that the narrative is laid out for you in this fashion, clear cut and episodic.

There are still limitations. You know little before you were created, patched together only through memories Elliot chooses to share. And you get no choice in what, or _who_ , you see, through Elliot’s eyes or otherwise.

_Mind awake, body asleep._

A case in point: you have been alone with Mr. Robot on only two occasions. Once was before your creation – in Elliot’s apartment, with Darlene, revealing the moment of genesis for fsociety and the hack that would culminate in the events of five/nine.

The other instance was in the back seat of Tyrell Wellick’s SUV, dropped _in medias res_ into the tail end of an argument. At the time, neither of you were aware Elliot was asleep behind those eyes. Later, this moment is revisited, with Mr. Robot wearing Elliot’s face. Tyrell tries coercion, and then threatens – Mr. Robot counters, and exits the vehicle.

“There’s something between us!” Tyrell calls out towards you both, during the second visitation. He is emotional, pleading, where Mr. Robot is calm and resolute.

 _Mind awake, body asleep_.

If Elliot knew that Mr. Robot had let you in – whether inadvertently, or by design – he might consider it important. Or perhaps the moment itself wouldn’t be important, just another bright drop into the well of missing time he’s trying desperately to fill. Perhaps it would anger him, a further violation of his trust in you, another test of madness or reality, and he would spill that moment to the floor, bleeding it out through the cracks in his mind. You wouldn’t know. You’re just an observer.

*

 _I know I said that he can never be in control again. I know, and I’m sorry. I know this is dangerous for you too. But we need to know what he’s up to._ Elliot walks with you around the room, his body lying still on the hospital bed. _I hope you don’t mind helping me out again. I have to be the silent observer, like you and him, so we can get some answers. While I’m confined to this bed it should be safe enough. He’s been quiet since we woke up, which is never a good sign. Maybe he wants us to think the bullet glitched him out, but I highly doubt that._

_Here’s a theory I have. Let’s go through it together. I think Mr. Robot’s been working with Angela. Tyrell’s message was encrypted – Mr. Robot was the only one who knew how to find him. And then after he shoots me, I open my eyes in this fucking medical room straight from a slasher flick and there she is, and she knows about Stage 2 and Tyrell. It’s the only thing that makes sense – maybe, after the femtocell, I thought that was the end of it, but for him, it was only the beginning._

The bolt of the door being unlatched cuts through the silence of the room like a shot. You and Elliot move in close, peering out into the hallway as the man in the cleansuit opens the door. Angela is visible just outside the entrance, partially illuminated by the light from inside. She looks through the door for a long moment.

_The Dark Army needed someone inside Evil Corp to bring everything together. Mr. Robot could’ve tricked her, gotten her involved. On the train, when she was going to confess, she said it would all catch up to me, sooner or later. That I can’t work with him. Was that a warning for me, or was she taking aim with a loaded gun, him in the crosshairs? Because she realized who was pulling the strings and wanted out, like I did?_

Then into the light also steps Tyrell.

_And yet we end up here anyway._

“He asked for you,” Angela is saying. “Here.” She places the refilled glass of water in Tyrell’s hands. “Be careful, he’s still in a fragile state.” Tyrell nods, his eyes trained on the body in the gurney. He’s a mess, his eyes red-rimmed and jawline shadowed by stubble, and his expensive suit is clearly crumpled from several days' wear. Juxtaposed with Angela, it's clear to you that the balance of power has begun to shift.

Elliot steps back, allowing Tyrell to come into the room, and he passes you both, unseeing. Angela nods at the man at the door, who shuts it behind him. Over on the bed, Elliot’s body begins to stir. Tyrell hesitates for a long moment, then strides in quick, sharp steps towards him. You and Elliot follow, pausing at the end of the bed as Tyrell takes a seat at his side. He sets the glass down on the side table, then leans over to regard the sleeping face next to him.

Tyrell is very tactile, seemingly even more so than when you all first made acquaintance. While you don’t have definitive proof, per se, you could postulate that Mr. Robot doesn’t share Elliot’s strong aversion to touch. By that metric, it certainly implies something has changed if Tyrell has gotten handsier. One arm is laying lax against the crisp white of the hospital sheets and Tyrell’s fingers ghost across it, playing with the IV tube and tugging down the medical tag where it’s ridden up slightly upon thin wrists. Then Mr. Robot’s eyes open, and he rubs them with one hand, squinting in the bright light of the surgical lamp.

“Elliot, I—” Tyrell begins, in a voice that trembles dangerously. “I – why is this so fucking _bright_ , does this have to be—” In one fluid movement, he stands up and violently knocks the lamp back, shattering one bulb on impact, and a few more as it swings down to smash against the back of the gurney. The resulting tremor nearly displaces the glass of water, sending a significant amount sloshing over to wet the table.

“What the _fuck_.” Elliot flinches backwards even as the words leave his lips, eyes very wide. You recall that, though this is familiar territory for you, Elliot has not seen this side of Tyrell Wellick before.

The light from the lamp flickers now towards the back wall, bringing your surrounds into a more ambient gloom. Brushing shards of glass off of his knuckles with shaking hands, Tyrell then grips the bedside chair and hurls it across the room, the wood cracking against the floor in several loud retorts before it comes to rest near the door.

Mr. Robot, who has been watching him calmly through all of this, finally speaks. “Are you done? Got that out of your system, buddy?”

Breathing heavily, Tyrell nods, coming back to stand at Mr. Robot’s side. For a few beats, he’s quiet. Elliot moves slowly closer to the bed again, until he’s mirroring Tyrell, with Mr. Robot lying down between them both. He doesn’t say anything to you – perhaps he can feel the fragility of the moment, as though any utterance could break it like glass under Tyrell’s fist.

“You clearly came here to say something,” Mr. Robot says evenly. “Get out with it, then, so we can all move on.”

Tyrell lets out a long sigh, then, placing one knee on the bed, he moves to cup Mr. Robot’s face with both hands. There’s a bandage tucked behind Mr. Robot’s ear, likely from the impact of Elliot’s fall after he was shot, and Tyrell’s right thumb drifts over it. “Elliot, I’m so—” he tries, again, then leans in to kiss him.

Beside you, Elliot sucks in a sharp breath.

It’s hard to know what they’re all feeling, between the three of them. On the one hand, Elliot doesn’t try to separate them, and Mr. Robot doesn’t push Tyrell away. On the other hand, perhaps it’s because Mr. Robot is in complete control of Elliot’s body now – or, that Tyrell’s grip leaves little room to move in any regard.

_Is this why he hid him from me?_

Two splinters of one mind – two fractured sets of wants and needs in one body. Elliot and Angela and their long orbit of one another is, by now, well-established for you. Tyrell’s investment has at least been spelled out to you over the phone. But if Mr. Robot has developed affection, or even love, for Tyrell, in the deep well of Elliot’s lost time, to what extent would Elliot experience those feelings – or, alternatively, was Mr. Robot first driven to Tyrell by Elliot’s own desires? It’s unclear to you how much of the connection between Tyrell and Elliot is trapped within the iron vault of Mr. Robot, who took a thick black marker and redacted Tyrell from the last few months of Elliot’s life. Angela, Elliot, Tyrell, Mr. Robot; how much do the lines blur between them?

_How long has this gone on – since the beginning, since we first met?_

Of course, to know the answer to any of this would be to know where Elliot ends and Mr. Robot begins. It's hard to tell, these days, even for you.

 _How long has Tyrell been another body Mr. Robot can control?_

“I’m so sorry,” Tyrell says finally, his voice cracking, and he presses his forehead to Mr. Robot’s chest. He then starts to cry in short, hitching breaths, hands slipping off Mr. Robot’s face to fist in his gown. He seems careful, however, to keep away from near the slightly raised area around the right side of Mr. Robot’s ribcage, under which bandages cover the bullethole he put in Elliot. Mr. Robot lays an arm across his back and says nothing, staring up at the ceiling. Elliot reaches out, his fingers brushing feather-light against Tyrell’s suit jacket, then draws them back.

The heart rate monitor beeps through the silence. Ninety and steady.  

“You did what you had to do,” Mr. Robot tells Tyrell once he starts to wind down. Tyrell nods against his chest, taking a deep breath. “Look, it was a tough call to make. I don’t blame you, is that what you want to hear?”

“I don’t understand you,” Tyrell says wretchedly, his voice muffled wetly against Mr. Robot’s gown. “I don’t understand – why you would—”

Mr. Robot slips his hand off Tyrell’s back and brings it under his chin, tilting it up to meet his eyes. “Look, don’t concern yourself with this. We’ve done good work, and we’ll continue to do it. Pull yourself together, there we go.” Tyrell eases himself off the bed, but pauses as Mr. Robot grips his arm. “Now, go on and tell Whiterose that I’m ready to execute Stage 2.”

This spooks Elliot enough that he takes a physical step back. _What. No, he can’t. I’m not strong enough to go anywhere, no matter where Mr. Robot takes our mind to stop the pain._

“Now? Are you sure?” Tyrell asks, voice low and tense.

“Our window is closing,” Mr. Robot replies, dropping his arm. “Let’s get it done.”

_No, no, no, this can’t be happening. It’s over. There’s no more work to be done, we’re finished._

Mr. Robot turns around to look right at Elliot, and smiles. “Enjoy the view?”

Elliot stiffens. _He’s bluffing. He can’t see us._

Mr. Robot snorts, to all appearances quite amused. “What, you didn’t think I’d find out about your little trick? Newsflash, kiddo: we share a brain. And it was meant for greater things than you. So hey, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve gotta take this one.”

Tyrell, oblivious to all of this, has made it to the door, which the man in the cleansuit shuts and bolts behind him. Elliot registers this, and makes a grab for Mr. Robot’s gown, still wet from Tyrell’s tears. “What are you _doing?_ ”

“Nuh uh uhh,” Mr. Robot says cheerfully. Elliot’s hands somehow aren’t connecting with Mr. Robot’s body. Kneeling on the bed, now, he scrabbles at the gown and then beats at Mr. Robot’s chest, frantically, hitting the bullethole again and again. “This is only a dream for you, remember? You have no control here.”

“You can’t lock me out of my own mind, you were _dead_ , I took a bullet…” His eyes grow wide and manic in the dying light of the surgical lamp. “You lied to me, you sick piece of shit, you made me think Tyrell was dead, that I _killed him,_ that he wasn’t real…”

“What do you want me to say, Elliot?” Mr. Robot shoots back. “Look, I wanted to work with you, I really did. You were always my first pick. Remember Steel Mountain? We were incredible, the perfect team. But just when the going got tough, you tapped out, man! You almost ruined everything, all of the good work we did. I had to protect it, so, yes, I took the wheel for a bit. Then I gave you back the reins and what did you do? You got us locked up, away from a terminal, for _a month_. A whole fucking month, with all the shit going down on the outside, we could’ve—we _should’ve_ been in the thick of it, working with fsociety, forging our brave new world, so, again, you left me no choice but to keep this from you! Trying to undermine me at every turn, it needed to stop. You have to think about the bigger picture.”

“What are you doing with Tyrell?”

“You know what? At this point, it’s none of your damn business,” Mr. Robot snaps. He takes a sharp breath and grimaces, breathing it out slowly. “Look. Tyrell, he’s smart, driven. Not too dissimilar to us, you know? Just needs to be steered in the right direction. Luckily, for both of us, there’s me. Once I found the right form of guidance, he became a great asset. He’s not doing anything he doesn’t want to do – well, up until _you_ decided to show up to our meeting.”

“I don’t believe you,” Elliot says shakily. “You’re lying, you’re manipulating him, just like you manipulated me. You’re a poison—”

“Oh boo hoo, gimme a break, stop acting like it isn’t against your grand moral compass to defend a guy who strangled a woman to death on a rooftop—”

“Everything you touch is infected,” Elliot continues, gripping the sides of his head. “Everything bad that’s happened is because of you. Wake up, why can’t I _wake up_ —”

“Come on, kiddo, you can’t give me all the credit. Five/nine was your idea, remember? You wanted this world, and you let nothing stop you from creating it. You made yourself into a god, and with your divine hand, you smote the earth of your enemies. Now you’ve got to pull up your big boy pants and live with that.”

“I hate you,” Elliot says, breathing heavily as he stares down at Mr. Robot. The dying surgical lamp flickers, chasing shadows across the two of them. Elliot kneeling atop Mr. Robot – one above, one below. One real, one not. 

Mr. Robot smiles. “I don’t hate you, Elliot. All I’ve ever tried to do was to make you happy. One day, I hope you can see that.”

The slide of the latch turns Elliot’s attention back to the door, and you both witness Tyrell’s return. He’s pushing a wheelchair, flanked by two masked members of the Dark Army. Behind them, Whiterose steps into the room, gesturing sharply for the man in the cleansuit to leave.

“Do you always have to be so dramatic?” she asks Tyrell, presumably referring to the mess he’s made of the room. “No, don’t answer, that was rhetorical. Load him up, we have work to do.”

“Where are they taking me?” Elliot says, turning back to Mr. Robot, hands gripping the gown at his throat. “ _What have you done?_ ”

“You thought you could stop Stage 2 by getting Tyrell to shoot us?” Mr. Robot asks, still wearing that smile. “Sorry to disappoint you, but you were only delaying the inevitable. Now, thanks to your little dream excursion, I alone can finish what you didn’t have the guts to do.”

Angela hurries into the room, her heels clicking frantically on the concrete. “Wait, you can’t do this now,” she objects, slightly out of breath. “He’s just been _shot_ , he needs to rest, you can’t—”

“He’s awake, lucid, he still has fingers to type with,” Whiterose says brusquely. “He’s perfectly capable of finishing the hack. You can either leave, or help deliver him to the terminal, but do not try to interfere.”

“I’m sorry, Angela,” Mr. Robot says. “I promise, it’s all going to be okay.”

It’s not a bad impression of Elliot, but even you can tell it’s an ill fit. There’s a cruelty to Mr. Robot that he can’t quite hide – a certain self-satisfaction in the loose set of his limbs, his eyelids at half mast, a smirk hidden in the crease of his mouth.

“It’s you,” Angela says slowly, her eyes trained on Mr. Robot. She sounds sad. “Isn’t it?”

Elliot scrambles off of the gurney, nearly falling over. He stands in front of her, gripping her shoulders, pleading with her, fast and desperate. “Angela! Angela, you’re right, it’s not me, _please_ , Angela…”

Mr. Robot frowns. “Who else would I be? Angela, are you... is everything okay?”

 _The whole time,_ Elliot says to you in disbelief. _He never glitched out, he’s been right here, watching us, this whole time, and we’ve fallen right into his trap._

Angela’s expression smoothens out, a slate wiped clean of any emotion. “Fine,” she says coolly, addressing Whiterose. “I’ll take him.”

_This can’t happen. You have to help me. We have to find a way... we have to do something, before he destroys everything!_

“Give it up, kiddo,” Mr. Robot mutters under his breath.

“I am perfectly capable of—” Tyrell argues, his grip on the chair white-knuckled.

“We discussed this,” Angela says to Tyrell, her tone clipped. Tyrell meets her steely gaze for only a moment before he releases the chair and stalks off. Angela takes over, wheeling it to the bedside where Elliot’s body smiles at her, and Elliot’s mind begs her to leave.

“Angela, you’ve got to listen, you can’t let him do this...”

“Your actions nearly derailed this entire operation,” Whiterose says tightly, as the two Dark Army members roughly transfer Mr. Robot from the bed to the chair, removing the IV drip and heart monitor with brutal efficiency. “You’re lucky I chose not to let your life end with that bullet. Let me be clear with you, Elliot, you’ve wasted my most precious resource – time. You have one final chance to pay that debt with your life still intact. Do we have an understanding?”

Off to the side, Tyrell twitches violently – whether at the thought of Elliot dying, or his own culpability in the failure to execute Stage 2 in a timely manner that might end with the cold barrel of a gun pressed to his own chest, it’s not clear to you. But Elliot abandons his efforts to sway Angela and turns to Tyrell instead.

“Tyrell, look at me,” Elliot says, low and desperate. “You care about me, or him, I don’t know, but we have a connection - you said so yourself - you _know_ there’s a reason I tried to stop Stage 2, that I refused to step away from that terminal, you must have seen it, when you shot me, you can’t – you have to _listen to me—_ ”

It’s a lost cause. Like Angela, Tyrell’s glassy eyes don’t stray from the figure in the chair.

“Hey, I’m a genius,” Mr. Robot says with a disarming grin, his arms spread wide. “We tend to be troubled – comes with the territory. I doubt you’ll pick up anyone half as smart as me without twice the crazy. Until you can, I don’t know, build a robot that can do what I do? I’m your best bet.”

“I hope so, for your sake,” Whiterose replies. “Let’s go.”

_We can’t let them leave, or it’s all over._

Angela begins to wheel Mr. Robot towards the door, Tyrell hovering on one side and Whiterose the other, the two Dark Army members bringing up the rear. All you can do is watch as Elliot tries to squeeze through the press of bodies, to reach Mr. Robot, tearing at Whiterose’s dress, then at Tyrell’s suit, trying to leverage his body between the Dark Army guards to get to Angela, his fingers outstretched but never quite making contact. Then they’re out of the room, but neither you nor Elliot seem to be able to push your way through them as the door inexorably swings back towards the frame, the gap growing smaller and smaller, forcing you both backwards, until—

“You can’t leave me here!” Elliot shouts, pounding his fists against the door as it finally clicks shut. No matter that it’s unbolted – you realize now that neither of you can get out, no matter how hard you try. A slick of blood begins to grow against the pitted metal as the skin of Elliot’s knuckles splits. “Let me out! Let me out! Let me—”

The surgical light flares bright and white for a brief moment against the back wall, and then extinguishes, taking you both into darkness.

*

You aren’t always with Elliot when he wakes up. Sometimes, you’re with someone else – another time, another place. Maybe you’re still here, dropped once more down the rabbit hole into unknown space, because he needs you. A grand assumption of your continued existence, perhaps, but one that draws on the purpose of your creation. Hello, friend.

White walls. White ceiling, with no electricity burning through the bulb of the utilitarian light fixture. These are your observations, because this is what Elliot sees when he first opens his eyes. He’s lying on a bare mattress, hospital gown replaced with dark jeans but his bandaged torso left bare. A t-shirt is neatly folded next to him, a dark patch marking the fabric below the right sleeve.

Angela watches Elliot from the corner of the room. “You’re awake.”

“What am I doing here?”

“You don’t remember,” Angela says. It’s not so much a question as a statement of fact.

“It wasn’t me,” Elliot says. “It was him. You have to believe me, whatever I did...”

“I know,” Angela replies. “Don’t worry, we didn’t get to the terminal. There was another brownout – the lights went out, so I hit you over the head and told Whiterose that you fell out of your chair in the dark. I didn’t know what would happen, but I had to take a chance that it would bring you back.”

“He’s taken control,” Elliot says, digging fingers from crossed arms into the slots of his ribcage, just below his bandages. “He’s watching, all the time now, out of sight – if I slip, he’s there, waiting. He can just shut me out of my own body, now, and I don’t know how to stop him.”

“I can tell, when it’s him,” Angela says. “There’s something in his eyes, and his speech, his mannerisms – I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before. I’m going to help you keep him out, as well as I can. But you have to understand, Elliot, that neither you nor he can stop Stage 2 now. The Dark Army don’t want to risk the detonation failing with the power going in and out, so they’re working on stabilizing the local grid, but. It’s not a matter of if the building comes down, but when.”

“You have to get away from them,” Elliot urges her. “Leave me, I don’t care, but get out of here while you can. They can’t – they can’t have you. Anyone but you.”

“I can’t,” Angela replies. “This is where I have to be, right now.”

“Why?” Elliot asks, his voice cracking.

You know the whole story, of course. You’ve seen Angela caught in a vice grip between two worlds; in her future, and her past – then, in the tightening noose of the FBI, and the caustic web of the Dark Army. You’ve seen the choices she’s made, the sacrifices, the pyrrhic victories, the affirmations she has on tape to keep her moving forwards. You’ve seen that, through all of it, Qwerty has been kept alive and well in her apartment.

Elliot has no idea what she’s been through, and what she’s capable of now.

“I’m protecting you,” she says simply. “And I’m protecting myself.”

_I was wrong. Of course Angela would never work with Mr. Robot. I don’t know how she became a part of this but the Dark Army has her, and me, and Tyrell too. We all ended up here, cornered, like factory animals, rounded up and ready for the slaughterhouse, with Mr. Robot operating the guillotine. Maybe this was always destined to happen, once I started down this path. But he was right – no matter where I try to place the blame, I started this, and now one way or another it’s going to be finished._

_It’s only a matter of time._

“Elliot, listen to me,” Angela says, crouching down by the mattress. “Evil Corp has contingencies in place for power failure. It’s a fire hazard, so, as a precaution, all employees are evacuated. Right now, it’s just an empty building. Do you understand?”

_She could be lying. No, I can’t think like that. There has to be someone I can trust._

You wouldn’t know if the particulars of what Angela is saying are true. Or, maybe you do. After all, you are Schrödinger’s compendium of knowledge on any given topic – both simultaneously an expert and knowing jack shit, as well as every iteration in between. Still, either way, you can’t tell Elliot. Despite his genius, and despite your omniscience, in this moment you are both powerless to change your fate.

_But if the building comes down, and the records are gone, that will be it. The beginning of the end. One small step for man, and one giant fuck you to mankind._

“I should’ve died from that bullet,” Elliot says. “If I died, everyone would be safe. They could rebuild. One day, everything could go back to the way it was.”

Angela shakes her head. Gently extricating his hands from where they tightly grip his sides, she takes them in her own, and Elliot allows it. “That’s not the answer. It never was.”

“So, we just wait?” Elliot asks softly. “Wait for me to end the world?”

“I don’t know,” Angela replies. “But whatever this is, it’s not the end. Not yet.”

Above you, the ceiling light flickers once, twice, and then shines bright.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, the Angela/Elliot/Tyrell/Robot love quadrangle of Great Suffering they've been developing is one of the things I'm most excited about for S3. Don't let me down, Sam Esmail!


End file.
